Knowledge Management

Welcome to the Knowledge Management (KM) Platform!

The MDG-F's Knowledge Management platform serves to collect, disseminate and permanently preserve the Fund's intellectual output in digital form. By extending access to our data and analyses, the MDG-F aimed to provide development practitioners, knowledge management specialists and policy makers with insight that will improve the impact of development programs across the globe.

Accelerating Progress toward the Millennium Development Goals

The MDG-F Secretariat, based in the UNDP Headquarters in New York, was responsible for the monitoring and evaluation of the Joint Programmes it funded as well as for the management of the knowledge gained from its work.
To this end, in addition to incorporating Knowledge Management (KM) into the joint programmes’ management and learning cycle, the MDG-F formed KM partnerships with a number of UN agencies and academic institutions.
The purpose of these alliances was to analyze the MDG-F programmes’ good practices and lessons learned and to promote South-South cooperation by facilitating the exchange of experiences between countries.
These partnerships were instrumental in allowing the MDG-F to contribute its knowledge and innovation to the international development arena by leveraging the expertise, networks and convening power of its partners. This expanded the impact of the work of the MDG-F beyond its direct area of influence, thus contributing not only to improvements in future policy and development initiatives, but also to international debates such as the thematic consultations on the post-2015 development agenda. In the table below you can find a list of initiatives supported through partnerships with various institutions.

The MDG-F promoted the use of a multi-sectoral approach to achieving the MDGs.
As many of the post-2015 thematic consultations highlighted, the MDGs cannot be tackled in silos, rather, they require an integrated and holistic approach that avoids competition between goals.
Within the UN system, joint programming offers a unique opportunity to do just this.
It allows each agency to contribute expertise and added value in a way that fosters coordination among UN agencies and between the UN and national governments.
Such coordination can help increase the efficiency of UN interventions by avoiding duplication of activities.
It can also increase policy and aid effectiveness, thereby creating better conditions for long-term sustainability.
The experience of the MDG-F in applying a multi-sectoral approach through joint programmes has been analyzed in depth and can be found in several of the publications you will find in our online library.
For a general overview of the challenges and opportunities of this approach, please read our discussion paper on From Global Agenda to National Action Intersectoriality, national ownership and “One UN.”

In addition to working on knowledge management through our partnerships, the MDG-F Secretariat also worked directly to promote the analysis of lessons learned, the exchange of experiences between countries and the development of a knowledge reservoir both on the joint programmes model and on sectorial issues.
Click for a detailed description of the activities carried out directly by the Secretariat’s New York-based team.

Knowledge Management Partnerships

The objective of this initiative was to facilitate the generation of knowledge from the experiences of the 24 joint programmes in this thematic window. This included the preparation of documents on multi-sectoral work in nutrition, the role and importance of political commitment to efficiency policies for food security and nutrition, and analysis of the link between agriculture and nutrition in the MDG-F programmes.

Using the approach of the UN's REACH partnership, this initiative reviewed Mauritania's Nutrition Action Plan to make it more equity-focused, analyzed both the cost and the expected impacts of implementing the revised Plan, and identified the current funding gap. The methodology used could subsequently be applied in other countries.

This project strengthened the capacities and skills of technical staff involved in the management of programmes and projects to combat malnutrition that are being implemented in Latin America and the Caribbean.

This initiative was designed to ensure that knowledge and innovations generated by the MDG‐F programmes in Democratic Economic Governance were properly documented, analysed and widely disseminated for uptake and scaling-up.

The UNDP Water Governance Facility (WGF), which is housed at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), implemented this initiative to ensure that the knowledge and innovations generated by the MDG‐F programmes in Democratic Economic Governance were properly documented, analysed and widely disseminated for uptake and scaling-up. The main focus of the knowledge and programmes was water governance.

The purpose of this research project was to help overcome socio-cultural clashes between communities, service providers, development cooperation actors and local authorities, and the resulting ineffectiveness of sanitation and water supply systems in selected indigenous areas.

The objective of this initiative was to collect data and knowledge generated by the 18 joint programmes in the MDG-F's thematic window of Culture and Development and to promote the exchange of experiences among programme countries.

This initiative provides an innovative online tool to help design and plan effective programmes on culture and development. The tool was developed by analysizing and systematizing the experiences of the MDG-F's 18 programmes on Culture and Development.

This initiative aimed at enhancing the United Nations´s capabilities in the field of Private Sector and Development by generating knowledge from, systematizing and disseminating the experiences of the MDG-F joint programmes in this thematic window.

This initiative provided information and expert support to the MDG-F joint programmes in high-priority areas affected by climate change by documenting and disseminating success stories and lessons learned, and by promoting the exchange of experiences.

This partnership shared knowledge on best practices and lessons learned from the 13 MDG-F Gender programmes and ensured that insight gained from pilot experiences was fed into the global knowledge base to inform future policy and promote the achievement of MDG-3.

This initiative provided support across all sectors of the MDG-F joint programmes to better introduce gender equality as a crosscutting issue in planning and programing. It also produced good practices and lessons learned on how joint programmes can effectively promote gender equality within different MDGs.

UNDP – Gender Team Regional Service Center for Latin America and the Caribbean

This initiative helped to position gender equality as a priority topic on the national and regional political agenda in Latin America within the framework of the Brasilia Consensus. For this purpose, several publications were produced, training conducted and advocacy activities implemented.

This initiative collected, analyzed and disseminated knowledge generated by the MDG-F ´s Joint Programmes on Youth Employment and Migration. Workshops for sharing experiences and promoting South-South cooperation were also organized.

This initiative helped raise awareness about the participation of indigenous peoples in monitoring the MDGs. The analysis used the experience of the MDG-F's joint programmes and developed good practices and lessons learned.